RAW PREY MODEL GUIDELINES

This is a dedicated place for all of your questions and answers about Raw Diets. There are also some really cool groups like "Raw Fed" on the topic you can join. This forum is for people who already know they like the raw diet or sincerely want to learn more. Please remember that you are receiving advice from peers and not professionals. If you have specific health-related questions about your dog's diet, please contact your vet!

I just stumbled across this post that summer made almost a year ago, and it was so awesome i thought it needed to be re-posted. It answers alot of questions for new and old raw feeders alike. I had to remove the links because they dont copy paste over but its still fantastic

Heya pups!

As promised, I thought it may be helpful to those who are interested in reading on the raw prey model diet as an alternative to feeding our fuzzies.

I hope no one thinks I'm ramming this down anyone's throats, I just wanted to make one post where someone who was curious or interested about it can come and read on it and decide for themselves. I hoep people enjoy reading this!!

Here're some basic guidelines to refer to, and some good websites with great info.

1) Why feed raw?
- Prey model feeders feel that dogs are physiologically carnivores. Dogs have been shown by geneticists to be a variation of the grey wolf. They differ by 0.2% in the mitochondrial DNA (and I suspect much of this difference has to do with coloring and shape and size).

- David Mech, the forefront wolf biologist who has studied them intensely in their own natural habitat (not an artificial wolf colony), has observed that as natural carnivores, the wolf's diet consists mostly of large prey, and supplemented by smaller prey in leaner times, and very occasionally, he'll notice some vegetation grazing, but again only during extremely lean times. Wolves are carnivores. They CAN subsist on non-meat products, but by and large, they need raw prey to thrive and reproduce.

- So by trying to appropriate a whole prey through feeding of various body parts, we feed what the dog has been designed by nature to eat. Because the dog's physiology is designed to be carnivorous, this is what we feed them.

- Physiology:
no grinding molars (all sharp scissor like teeth),
strong wide jaws to really open up, take in a large piece, and crunch down and gnaw,
no amylase in the saliva to begin digestion, and therefore,
very acidic stomach juices (at about 1 - 2 on the litmus scale, 7 being neutral - humans' stomach acidity is only around 5),
very short digestive tract to keep food moving along out
not to mention they are natural hunters - every dog has an instinct to hunt - this instinct is part and parcel of being a carnivore. I don't see wolves stalking a berry branch...

- By that logic, because a dog/wolf is designed to feed the way they do in teh wild, evolution has shown us this is path of least resistance. To ask your dog to eat what they're not biologically designed to do is therefore providing obstacles along the path of least resistance. To many rawfeeders, this is basically asking for trouble.

2) How much to feed?
- Essentially, most dogs require about 2 - 3% of their body in raw food to maintain good health and weight. Working dogs may require more, some furry couch warmers may require 1%.

- This amount that you determine what your dog does well on is a trial and error kind of thing. Most people start with 2%, then either feed more or back up depending on how their dog's body feels.

- The amount does NOT have to be the exact same amount every day. Some days you can certainly feed more, then feed slightly less the next day to compensate for the larger amount of food prior. Some people feed the gorge/fast method, where they allow their dogs to eat two or three times the daily amount, then just fast their dogs the next day or however long, to compensate again for the larger amount.

- Know your dog. I have a self-regulator on my hands who generally will only eat about twice the daily amount even though there may be five days worth of food sitting in front of her in the form of a goat leg. She won't fast herself the next day, she'll just eat slightly less than normal. Again, use the dog's body and energy level as a guideline. Looking porky? back off on the amount, and feed slightly less fatty if necessary. (Although fat is an integral part of the diet...)

- You can feed once a day, or twice a day. It's up to you.

- Puppies? Most raw prey model feeders feed 2 - 3% of the projected adult body weight. So a little GSD puppy, who may grow to be 80 lbs, will still be fed about 2% of the 80 lbs as a puppy. Just spaced out over a few feedings since puppies do better wiht more frequent feedings. Once they hit about 6 mths, you can back off to twice a day, and once a year old, you can do once a day, or even the gorge/fast if that's what you prefer.

3) What to include in the diet?
-Prey model feeders don't generally feed anything other than raw meat, edible bone, and organs. We don't think veggies form a necessary part of the diet because a) we subscribe to dogs being carnivores following their physiology; b) veggies and fruit form only about 1% of the grey wolf's natural diet - it's more like grazing on a sweet berry if it's there. Kiind of like the way I like to nosh on candy.

- The ratio of meat/bone/organs is 80%/10%/10%. Half the organ allotment is liver, following the notion that the liver is the largest internal secreting organ. We use this ratio as kind of the general ratio that most prey animals are in their makeup. It may vary, of course, and again, this 80/10/10 ratio is a guideline, but really most animals are made in ratios not too far from this one.

- Meat: this is muscle meats. Muscle attached to bones, and also parts of the body that are organs, but are muscular in nature (non-secreting). This includes, tongue, heart, gizzards, trachea, skin (yes skin secretes, but it secretes waste through water and salt aka sweat OUT of the body, so we don't count that, hee.) I count stomach as a muscle meat, but in keeping to form with the whole prey, I don't stomach as the main part of the meat ratio - so despite how much Summer adores green tripe, she only gets it a couple times a week.

- Edible bone: we consider weight-bearing bones of large animals as teeth breakers and not very edible. Edible bones tend to be less dense, more porous. Depending on the size of the dog, edible bones range from chickens, to turkey, to duck, to fish, to rabbit, to pork, to goat, to lamb. Some powereaters do manage to chew off the ends of beef ribs. It's a Know Thy Dog situation.

- Secreting organs: liver should be half the organ allotment. The rest can be made up of kidney, spleen, thymus, pancreas, lung, testicles (mountain oysters), brains.

NOTE: remember, we call it prey model, because those of us who can't feed whole prey, we try to appropriate the whole prey through various body parts at various times. It's a prey built over time. Frankenprey, as many people call it.

So again, this ratio can be met over time. It helps me to know how much Summer eats in a week, roughly, then cut up hunks of organs that make up 10% of the weekly amount. Then these organ hunks can be fed throughout the week. This way, I know in each week, Summer is getting 10% of organs in her diet, and half of this is liver. (So the 10% organ amount is divided into 4 smaller hunks, and twice a week, she gets a liver hunk, and twice a week she gets other organ hunks. I space out the variety to give it more balance.)

Another note about edible bone - most store bought cuts of meat with bone in them tend to be high in bone. So even if you see a nice pork shoulder roast covered in gobs of meat, the bone in there probably makes up about 15 - 20% of the piece. Store bought whole chickens have been gutted and de-feathered, so the bone ratio tends to be a little higher than real whole prey. I like to feed more meat when I find what I'm feeding Summer may possibly have too much bone in there. (Which is most of the time.) How to tell? Look at the writing in the poop! If your dog is straining slightly, and the poops come out crumbly and powdery and once they hit the ground, they fall apart, that's generally too much bone. If the poops are squishy and have no form (NOT diarrhea), then feed a tad more bone. It doesn't take a huge bone tweak to make a difference in the poop.

These are just really basic ideas to get started on. There's a lot of read up on, but at the same time, it's almost the easiest way I've ever fed my dog! ANd I've done it all - medium quality kibble, high quality kibble, homecooking, and now raw. Beyond that though, I seriously think that rawfeeding is what I consider to be the best diet for my girl. Hope you enjoyed reading my spiel!!

Looking porky? back off on the amount, and feed slightly less fatty if necessary. (Although fat is an integral part of the diet...)

Fat is integral to the diet, but keep in mind that something as fatty as pork, for example, is waaaaaaaay fattier than a natural food source would be. Caribou, deer, rabbits, etc. are very lean. So if you feed lots of pork, it should be trimmed, to prevent wear and tear on the pancreas. You may even want to skin poultry.

Zoe, Great post! I would argue though that there is a big benefit to providing certain vegetables to your dogs and it is also based in principle on the "prey model" concept. Considering that a wild carnivore such as a dog or wolf kills an animal what it goes for first....the organs and the stomach contents. Chances are, the stomach contents have pre and semi-digested vegetable matter in them. Domestic Dogs absolutely love this too. The key is to puree the vegetables which simulates what an herbivorous animal would do to what it eats. This is important because dogs lack the enzymes (amylase: as you mentioned in your post) to break down the cell walls of vegetables. Puree takes care of this. In fact, they get the puree and some of the juice from my own juicer (depending on what I'm juicing of course) and the pulp doesn't go to waste!

I found this on a raw feeding site:
"Unless the prey is a very small animal like a rabbit or a squirrel, wolves shake out the stomach contents before consuming the stomach lining. If it is small the stomach contents just get consumed with the rest of the animal.
When I feed Delta whole green tripe, she shakes out the stomach contents and leaves them behind. She eats the rest, though. Delta only gets plant material as an occasional treat. Delta usually gets half chickens or pork ribs.